Air Malta is dead – long live Air Malta!

It’s a small airline with just eight aircraft and that is to remain the same, but a lot is about to change for Air Malta, the national carrier of the island of Malta in the Mediterranean. After many years of struggling and failed rescue attempts, the current airline will be dissolved on March 30, only to be succeeded the next day by a new airline that will likely continue to operate under the same Air Malta brand.

The Maltese government announced the plans for the new national airline earlier this week. This follows two difficult years for Air Malta, in which it not only felt the effects of the pandemic but faced fierce competition from Ryanair subsidiary Malta Air and other low-cost airlines like Wizz Air and easyJet. Wizz Air

but also Lufthansa have established subsidiaries in Malta.

Being a small airline, Air Malta operated at a high-cost structure thanks to a comparatively big workforce of 1.000. According to the Times of Malta, the carrier was losing €170.000 a day in 2021 just from operating ten Airbus A320neo aircraft. During a press conference on Monday, Minister of Finance Clyde Caruana shared a graphic in which Air Malta’s costs have consistently exceeded revenues from 2009 until this year.